Wandering along the Strand towards Embankment Tube, after Turandot had finished, I spied this sign on the inside of a shop window:

I had not realised that there are now David Bowie stamps. Apparently so. Ten in all. The ones above, and six more featuring LP covers.

You know what they mean, but the phrase “DAVID BOWIE LIVE” seems rather ... jarring. What got Bowie onto these stamps now rather than any sooner, was that instead of being live, he is now dead. Only dead people, or royals, can be on stamps, right?

Not quite. If you were an England cricketer playing in the 2005 Ashes that England won, you might also have become an honorary royal:

Scroll down here, for that picture, together with some rather sneering and very Australian references to Britain’s alleged lack of sporting prowess, which (says the Australian sneerer) explains why so many went crazy when those Ashes were won. And why the Post Office also went crazy and broke its own rule of us only being allowed, on stamps, to see dead people.